Transcription

first because, i believe, on good (unintelligble) that no nation or tribe was originally so savage or ignorant as there are some nowadays. For in the primitive ages though they had not the means of education & improvement as we now have they had certain traditions which kept them from gross ignorance.

Besides, before that wide dispersion of the human races, the amount of population living in close proximity would afford certain social advantages for improvement. A thinly scattered people is sure to grow gradually more ignorant & uncivilised. Secondly, the aborigines themselves have an impression that their ancestors knew more than themselves. There are in the third place a few slight traces found of superior ideas such as I have related just now. And 

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